Meeting Public Comments

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SSB 3085

A bill for an act creating a capital murder offense by establishing the penalty of death for murder in the first degree, and including effective date and applicability provisions.

Agenda

Subcommittee members: Webster-CH, Bisignano, Rowley

Date: Monday, January 29, 2024

Time: 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM

Location: Room G15

Comments Submitted:

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The purpose of comments is to provide information to members of the subcommittee.

Names and comments are public records. Remaining information is considered a confidential record.

01-26-2024

Richard Nordin [Iowa CURE]

I urge you to NOT reinstate the death penalty in Iowa. It is costly, discriminatory, and does not deter crime. It focuses huge resources and attention that would better be focused on prevention and healing those affected by the crime.

01-26-2024

gordon allen [regtired - Deputy Attorney General]

I urge you to decline further pursuit of capital punishment. It is discriminatory, expensive and time wasting. It makes little sense for several lawyers for the state to spend many years litigating its application. How does it make sense to teach not to hit people, by hitting our kids; how does it make sense to teach 'do not kill' by killing.

01-26-2024

William Hickson []

I urge you to reject efforts to reinstate the death penalty in Iowa. Iowa already has one of the lowest murder rates in the nation. Reinstating the death penalty will only add burdens to our underfunded corrections, judicial, and mental health systems.

01-27-2024

Steven Pohlmeyer []

Senators,I used to be a proponent of capital punishment. At that time, an eye for an eye made sense to me.I later decided to research the issue. Being a fiscal conservative and prolife, and knowing mistakes happen in the judicial system, have caused me to become an opponent of State sanctioned killing.Further, killing someone for killing someone is not logical. And I now believe an eye for an eye only makes the world blind.A person can either choose to be against or for the death penalty. There is not a third choice.Steve Pohlmeyer

01-27-2024

Rick Halperin [Director, Southern Methodist University Human Rights Program]

I urge Iowa legislators to reject the idea of bringing the death penalty back to your state. Texas is the leading execution jurisdiction in both the US and the entire free world, having carried out 586 executions since it resumed this barbaric practice in 1982. We have executed the guilty, the innocent, juveniles and persons with (profound) intellectual disabilities, and yet we remain among the most violent states in the nation. The death penalty has never been, is not now, and never will be, anything but societal revenge. I urge Iowa to refrain from marching into darkness, and to stand in defense, advocacy and protection of the simple but essential proposition that there is no such thing as a lesser person.

01-27-2024

Mary Sand and Von Kaster [Amnesty International Group 40]

We do not want Iowa to become a death penalty state. Executions are ugly. Read the account of the killing of Kenny Smith in Alabama on 1/25/2024. Its as sickening as the crime he committed. Capital punishment does nothing for us as individuals and society. Its a taker of humanity and resources. Consider the executioner who is not a regular person anymore but is a legal killer. Thats wrong on its face. There is also the high cost and judicial sentencing that is not always fair.

01-28-2024

Donna Schneweis []

I urge Iowa to reject the reinstatement of the death penalty. One of the realities of the criminal justice system is that mistakes are made and innocent people are sent to prison. This includes Iowa, where the National Registry of Exonerations lists multiple murder cases where Iowa's criminal justice system has gotten it wrong. With the death penalty in place, the stakes are even higher because if a person is executed there is no bringing them back.There have been 196 exonerations from death row due to wrongful conviction nationally. This includes Iowa's neighbors Missouri, Illinois and Nebraska, all of whom have gotten death penalty cases wrong.Iowa can have public safety and accountability without the death penalty. I urge you to keep Iowa death penalty free.

01-28-2024

Carol Spaulding-Kruse [Des Moines Valley Friends Meetng]

I urge our legislators to stand firm against Senate Study Bill 3085 and any future legislation to restore the death penalty. There is a difference between holding someone accountable and debasing ourselves by committing another act of violence.

01-28-2024

Jane Robinette []

Please vote NO on SSB3085 which would bring back the death penalty to Iowa. Multiple studies show that capital punishment is not a deterrent to murder. The murder rate in death penalty states is consistently higher than in nondeathpenalty states. Furthermore, Black defendants are disproportionately more likely to receive a death sentence, particularly when the victims are white. Executions do not save money; they cost more than life in prison without parole. With courts and prisons already strained in staffing and funding, this does not make fiscal sense.The risk of wrongful execution is real. Since 1973, at least 196 people on death row have been exonerated. The finality of this punishment does not make moral sense given human error and bias.Because Iowa has not had the death penalty since 1965, a whole infrastructure will have to be created and funded, wasting resources.Humans are fallible. We can correct mistakes in other cases. We cannot correct mistakes once a person is dead. Vengeance and retribution are poor guides for rational action. Please oppose this bill.

01-29-2024

Gavrilah Wells [Amnesty International]

The United States is one of a few "developed" nations still using the barbaric, racist, arbitrary and very expensive death penalty. The death penalty is primarily used against the poor and the poorly defended and it devastates everyone it touches including the victim's families. It denies our most basic human right, the right to life, and it is irreversible. Iowa must continue to stay with the rest of the developed world and the many states across the US who have abolished or are moving to end this inhumane and torturous state sponsored murder. The death penalty fails to protect public safety and ultimately it does not help crime survivors heal. Since 1973 there have been 196 death penalty exonerations in the US. Studies by the National Academy of Sciences (2014) reported that at least 4.1 defendants sentenced to death in the United States are innocent, and this is an extremely conservative estimate. The National Academy of Sciences reports that at least 4.1 percent of defendants sentenced to death in the United States are innocent. The article, Rate of False Conviction of Criminal Defendants who are Sentenced to Death, explains that the number of innocent people is likely more than double the number of people actually exonerated and freed from death row. This should trouble everyone, specifically people in our legal system with an ethical obligation to correct injustice. Please do not reinstate the death penalty in Iowa. Vote no on Senate Study Bill 3085.

01-29-2024

Addison Williamson [Des Moines Area Valley Friends Meeting]

I urge our legislature to reject this bill. Our justice system is applied unequally along the lines of race, class, nationality, and sexual and gender identitythus, any application of the death penalty will (and does, in places where it is legal) reflect these disparities and dole out death unfairly along those same lines. What cruelties are we endorsing in our own society if we enable a final line of defense against crime as brutal as death by the chair, or gas, or lethal injection? Our time and money would be better spent on a programs which seek to rehabilitate those in our society who have been forced through misfortune and systemic injustice to turn to criminal actions, and our humanity would be reflected all the better through that than a resort to barbarism.

01-29-2024

Andrew Hughes []

I urge you to not reinstate the death penalty in the state of Iowa for the numerous reasons already listed. Systemic issues within the justice system along with the miscarriage of justice are issues that are in dire need of reform. To reinstate the death penalty means that those convicted as a result of these issues now have their lives forfeit. Wrongful convictions happen all the time, they can be overturned. The death penalty cannot. The state has already passed a number of regressive measures in the last few years, dont make bringing back this abhorrent barbaric practice one of them.